It is known that a coaxial connector element includes a central contact and an outer contact.
The central contact is designed to be connected to the central conductor of a coaxial cable, and the outer contact is designed to be connected to the outer conductor of the coaxial cable, which conductor is generally a grounding braid.
In most cases, the central contact is soldered via its rear end to the central conductor, while the outer contact, or the body of the connector element to which it is connected, is crimped to the braid.
Crimping the braid poses no particular problem, and is almost always satisfactory.
However, soldering the central conductor suffers from numerous drawbacks, among which mention can be made of the following:
the difficulty of using the same quantity of solder from one connector element to another, which is essential to obtain impedance that is always identical; PA1 the need to isolate the solder from the inside wall of the body of the connector element, in order to prevent a residual thread of solder from creating a short-circuit between the central conductor and ground; and PA1 the need to access the rear of the connector element at the time of installing it on a coaxial cable, in order to perform the soldering operation, which requires the presence of an opening that opens onto the rear end of the central contact. PA1 a central contact having a longitudinal axis and provided with a rear end connected to the central conductor of the coaxial cable and with a front end organized to connect the connector element to a complementary connector element; and PA1 an outer contact connected to the outer conductor of the coaxial cable; PA1 said coaxial connector element being characterized by the fact that it includes a coupling mounted on the central conductor of the coaxial cable, said coupling and the rear end of the central contact being shaped to snap-fasten together independently of the angular position of the central contact relative to its longitudinal axis.
A solution aimed at solving those drawbacks has already been proposed for an L-shaped connector element. That solution consists in providing a fork made up of two resilient prongs at that end of the central contact which is opposite from its connection end, and in providing a coupling on the central conductor of the coaxial cable, which coupling is organized to snap-fasten between the two prongs of the fork of the central contact. That coupling avoids the necessity of performing soldering inside the connector element and guarantees that a predetermined impedance is obtained.
It is thus not necessary to provide an opening in the rear of the connector element because the coupling can be snap-fastened into the central contact via the radial access provided for feeding the cable into the connector element.
Unfortunately, since the rear end of the central contact is accessed radially only, the coupling can snap-fasten to the central contact only if said central contact is suitably angularly-positioned, i.e. if the gap between the two prongs of its fork face the radial opening.
It is thus necessary, in addition to the coupling, to provide keying shapes on the body of the connector element and on the central contact so as to prevent said central contact from rotating, which involves, in particular, specific machining operations which increase the cost of the connector element.
In addition, it is necessary to guide the coupling so as to feed it "blindly" to the fork and to cause it to penetrate accurately between the two prongs of said fork, which requires the additional presence of a guide piece in the body the connector element.
Therefore, although snap-fastening the central contact of the connector element to an intermediate coupling can avoid the drawbacks related to soldering the central contact of the cable, it suffers from numerous other drawbacks which make that solution unattractive.